Emily & Herman

by John J. Healey

  He held the tiller in the crook of his right arm. Emily and Whitman sat next to each other, their backs leaning against the varnished wood and their feet resting on the bench opposite. William Johnson lay aft upon the deck on his stomach, hugging the repair rope wrapped about the damaged bowsprit, his head peering down with a child’s delight, enjoying the wind and the light and how the craft was cutting through the water.

  “You two make a handsome couple,” Whitman said, all of a sudden after glancing at them. Melville smiled and looked at Emily.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I am quite certain Mr. and Mrs. Melville make a far handsomer couple still,” she replied.

  “I would not know,” Whitman said, “for I have not had the honor of meeting Mrs. Melville. I can only speak for the here and now. And besides, surely it is possible for one to make a handsome couple with more than just one person.”

  “I do hope not,” she said, far more excited within than she appeared. And she was already in a state of excitement as it was, due to what, for her, was the uncanny and absolutely novel experience of sailing, and on such a vast stretch of sea in such a small boat. To think she had been anxious just the other day when the huge steamer pulled out of the cozy Fall River harbor. But today she was filled with a reckless sense of being alive, the prudish Hawthorne driven into exile, the escaped slave at sea in their hands on his way to freedom, this oafish journalist-poet trying to provoke her, and Melville, inches away at the tiller, body and soul, courting her in flagrant violation of all decency.

  “Well, I am afraid it is true,” Whitman said. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Melville?”

  “It appears to be a cultural issue,” he said. “I have not read of the opposite being true, but clearly there are many instances of cultures where a man quite naturally takes numerous wives.”

  “That is abominable!” Emily cried out in a tone akin to joy.

  “I am not so sure of that,” said Melville. “The number one enemy of the conventional western marriage is the inevitable dulling of the passions through prolonged familiarity. Having more than one spouse relieves some of that, I would think.”

  “How many wives were you permitted in the South Seas?” Whitman asked, nudging Emily with his elbow. Melville made as if he had not heard and continued with his disquisition.

  “Muslims are encouraged to have numerous wives. In ancient Japan the custom was quite common among the upper classes. In Egypt and in Persia there were harems galore. Then, of course, we have our Mormons who practice polygamy, rather joylessly it seems from an outsider’s point of view, but without any dire side effects as far as I know.”

  “Mr. Whitman asked you a question, Armando. How many wives did you have during your pagan idyll in the Marquesas?”

  “For your information I did not have even one ‘wife’ during my time there. Marriage as we know it, does not exist for those people. It is the most extraordinary thing. They have relations with each other, and with foreigners who have the good fortune to land there, based entirely on appetite. I rarely saw or experienced jealousy, for instance.”

  “If my mother were here she would dive into the sea to drown as a martyr for her faith rather than to have to hear of such a thing.”

  “And her daughter?” Melville asked.

  “Her daughter takes a more scientific view and wonders if such a society as the one you describe so glowingly, so liberated from restrictive Christian morals, might be a society devoid of love.”

  “An interesting thought,” said Whitman.

  “I observed a great deal of love during my time there. Both mothers and fathers treated their offspring with inordinate affections, at least until puberty.”

  “I am referring to romantic love.”

  “What is romantic love, I wonder?” Whitman asked.

  “My question,” Emily went on, “is whether your islanders ‘fall in love,’ or do they just cavort under the coconut trees like upright simians?”

  “Did my parents ever fall in love?” Whitman continued. “I am not sure, nor their parents before them. Did your parents fall in love, Miss Dickinson? How about yours, Mr. Melville?”

  “I think you do the natives of Nukuheva an injustice, Emily, by likening them to upright simians,” Melville said, very gently and looking at her more gently still. She blushed.

  “I agree. In a foolish attempt to prove witty it came out flat and untoward. I apologize.”

  Melville reached across and squeezed her hand and then looked up at the sails. “The western model imagines a couple taking a fancy to each other, then, assuming their parents and their social circle approves, attempting a process through which each sees the other as a unique and ideal solution to their loneliness and needs. A commitment is made, a marriage takes place, an initial period of romantic reverie occurs, or doesn’t, property is acquired, children are born, routines are established. The primary romantic spark, if it was ever truly there, cedes to a lower, steadier flame, to a dynamic of prolonged mutual dependence. They become a team, parents, citizens in their community. Can we agree on this?”

  “Yes,” said Emily.

  “At least for argument’s sake, yes,” said Whitman.

  “As to Mr. Whitman’s question whether, within that template, our respective parents had that initial period of romantic enchantment poets and troubadours have been going on about since the time of Arthur and Gwenevere—speaking for my own parents I am fairly certain they did.”

  “Then they were fortunate indeed,” Whitman said. “I am hard pressed to imagine my parents enjoying anything remotely akin to romantic grace.”

  “I must say, neither can I,” Emily said.

  William Johnson, holding onto what he could, made his way back and joined them. Whitman put his feet down and Johnson sat facing him.

  “What do you make of sea travel, Mr. Johnson?” Melville asked.

  “That it is both an unnatural thing for a man to do, and that it is a miracle.”

  “I quite agree with you William,” Emily said.

  “Laying down up there at the front of the boat I felt all my troubles lift. They were carried off by the wind.”

  “There you have one of every sailor’s main motivations for setting out upon the main,” Melville said.

  “Tell us, William,” Emily said, “did you know your father, or know if your mother and father had fallen in love with each other?”

  “My father was chosen by the plantation foreman and my mother was held down until the man was done with her while the master and his friends stood around and watched, and that happened repeatedly until she was some months on with child and they let her be—picking out some other couple for their sinful diversion.”

  The three listeners remained silent.

  “The master and his friends liked to watch that and to watch the whippings late after their evening meal when the women folk retired and the whiskey was flowing and on more than one occasion, I have been told there were women present as well. I was never formally introduced to my father. He was father to a number of us. He was a proud and sullen man who paid no attention to his offspring. And no, neither my father nor my mother had any opportunity to enjoy the luxury of courting.”

  Emily leaned forward and took Johnson’s hand in hers. Whitman looked up toward the jib. Melville finally spoke. “That is a terrible thing, William. A terrible thing for which there can be no forgiveness. We can only hope that, from now on, you will have a much better future than your kin since they were brought in chains to this odd land of ours.”

  “The Old Testament talks about an eye for an eye,” Johnson said. “And the New Testament talks of turning the other cheek.”

  “Which testament do you favor?”

  “I love Jesus, but I am more at home with Genesis.”

  Shortly after this conversation, both Whitman and Johnson returned to the prow of the sloop to talk, their hair and clothing blowing in the brisk breeze. Emily took advantage of the vacant space and lay down for
a nap as Melville kept the sloop on course. He looked at her now and then, restraining himself from the urge to place a hand upon her shoulder or to feel her cheek with the backs of his fingers or to smell her hair.

  An hour later, Emily awakened nestled on the cockpit bench in the shade of flapping sails. She looked up past the tip of the mast and took in the bluest sky she had ever seen. A late afternoon summer tenderness had taken possession of the light and aether. The boat was still and water lapped against the hull and she felt a powerful urge to pee and realized it was this pelvic prompting that had roused her from a slumber she could barely recall giving in to. Then, sitting up she saw something she had never seen before.

  The boat was anchored in shallow, clear water, just some two yards from a sandbar that extended from an empty stretch of beach along the leeward shore of an island that seemed uninhabited. Further in beach grass and dusty miller grew in the dunes and further in still thickets and green shrubbery were alive with birds and wild flowers. But what most drew her attention were the naked figures of Whitman and William Johnson laying next to each other on the sand by the water’s edge holding each other.

  She lay down again immediately, her heart racing as if it had been she herself caught in flagrante delicto. Where the deuce was Melville, she asked herself partly frightened at the thought that in a fit of disgust he may have abandoned her there with the two sodomites. So, Whitman too was one of them! The special respect she had held him in for the altruism he was demonstrating by risking his skin to contribute to the cause of human freedom, exemplifying an active Christian will to do good that she had held Melville somewhat in fault for lacking—fell like the proverbial house of cards, swept away by a sordid wind of depravity and self-interest. But upon further reflection, she had to admit that there was nothing in the posture of the two men she saw tossed together upon the beach that indicated coercion or skullduggery. They had both of them appeared equally enthralled by the sensations they were imparting to each other.

  Slowly she raised her head again, fascinated by this Decameron tableau, and then she looked the other way, scouring the view for Melville. Further along the strand of shore in this more easterly direction she did see something that resembled his clothing left in a heap. She looked out off the stern and saw him swimming, saw him swimming like a creature born to it, employing massive lazy strokes with his arms and breathing from side to side, heading further out to sea. Trusting in providence that he would not return at once and that the two individuals nearer by condemning themselves to a fiery afterlife would continue to do so for at least another minute, she tugged off her petticoats, raised the skirt of her dress and, taking hold of a line cleat, leaned her naked bottom over the side and emptied her bladder. It was at just this moment when Melville stopped swimming, ceasing his crawl, and began to tread water. As a matter of course, he turned to see how much distance had put between himself and the sloop. It was most definitely Emily’s naked derriere he saw, aimed his way with such precision he at first considered the absurd proposition she was doing it to taunt him. Then, and not without a certain measure of compassion, he realized what she was doing. He considered calling out to her but had not the heart, and worried she might find it terminally rude. Before initiating the swim back, he allowed himself the luxury of a voyeur’s delight wondering where the other two had disappeared to. He was too far away to make out her anatomy with anything resembling clinical detail but close enough to appreciate, and react to—cold water and all—the delicious gamine curves revealed thanks to her predicament. What a wondrous thing nature could be and what a glorious marvel was the female form. All he could really make out was her lower back, smooth and slight and white and then the telltale curves at either side that so gracefully budded and became the sweetly rounded cheeks of her naked arse.

  And then it was over. With a strength he would not have expected her capable of, she pulled herself back into the cockpit of the sloop in one fluid motion. Swimming back to shore he contemplated to what extent his state of enchantment derived from the feelings he had for her and what part from the novelty she represented. He had to admit there had been a time when viewing the posterior of his own Elizabeth would have provoked him into a similar state and it grieved him to recognize that was no longer the case. Why? What was it about familiarity that sated one’s interest? It also altered behavior. He had been far more attentive to Elizabeth’s wants and needs at the beginning, just as she had been far more flirtatious with him. Now their sense of “couple-dom” had been worn down through exposure, through children and the constant presence of other family members, his own mother for example, sleeping in the bedroom immediately adjacent to theirs. Come to think of it, he thought to himself, he had never spent time with Elizabeth similar to the time he had been passing these past few days with Emily.

  When Emily peeked back toward the fornicators, they had finished their dalliance and were dressing, sitting up on the damp sand. Turning the other way she caught a glimpse of Melville emerging from the sea naked as Adam before The Fall, striding up to where his clothes lay and standing there a few moments allowing the gentle sun to partially dry his gleaming skin. He presented a handsome, primitive vision of raw masculinity she had also never seen before and it moved her. Up until that afternoon, men had been creatures one always saw clothed, often excessively so, and then today without warning she found herself surrounded by all manner of virile nudity. She could not help but feel there was something shameful in it. This too was true.

  When they sailed into New London two hours later it was twilight and all four of them were quiet, each with their own set of agitated cogitations. Melville found the pier Emmet Halsey had described, and soon had the sloop securely moored. He knocked on the ship carpenter’s dockside workshop door just minutes before it was to close for the evening and the four travelers left the area on foot together with their mission accomplished.

  Whitman had a name for an inn, The Cardinal’s Deck, where William Johnson could be put up safely for the night, and just as it grew dark they found it. The front door, painted red, was flanked by two lilac shrubs in full bloom and the smell was intoxicating flooding both Emily and Melville with childhood memories. The owner was a stocky and broadminded Frenchman called René Miron, descended from early trappers and whose grandfather, like Melville’s, had fought the British during the American Revolution. This and the fact that Melville’s late father had done most of his business in Paris, won the man over immediately, and their appetites, accentuated by the day’s excitements and the paltry midday fare, were soon being attended to by une grande bouffe prepared with great gaulic gumption.

  Dominating one of the dining room’s walls was a portrait of Cardinal Richelieu.

  “How many of you have read The Three Musketeers?” asked their host in a French accent Melville was fairly certain the man had no cause for. It seemed all of them had read it with the understandable exception of William Johnson.

  “Just as I thought. And how many of you realize the author was a complete idiot?!” He gave this last word a distinctly French pronunciation delivered in unison with a thick slug of cork that popped from a deep green bottle of champagne and ricocheted off the low ceiling. He proceeded to fill their glasses. “Dumas presents the Cardinal as a villain, a calculating knave bejeweled with garish rings and bedecked in foppish liturgical clothing just to give his child’s tale a touch of simplistic adventure.” Here he paused for effect. “Richelieu was responsible for La France as we know it, was the first Prime Minister. The man was responsible for allowing Samuel de Champlain to establish a vibrant French colony in the heart of North America.”

  Melville raised his glass, pointing it toward the painting. “To the Cardinal.” They all followed suit. “And to France,” he continued.

  “And to liberté, egalité, fraternité,” said Miron raising his glass yet again and gesturing toward William Johnson.

  Everyone was feeling quite pleased with themselves at this point. Johnson pushed
his chair back and stood.

  “I too would like to speak a toast,” he said. “I ain’t never seen a black man do so and I reckon now’s a good a time as any.”

  “Here-here!” said Whitman with a nervous enthusiasm Emily took note of.

  “I don’t know what this nice man just said, speaking in a language I do not understand. But I can tell by how he said it that he meant well by me. Some of you have made light of my Bible learning, but all of you have been most respectful of me, and of where I come from, and all of you have been so helpful in getting me to where I am going. I know that I myself am a sinful man…” and here tears came into his eyes and his mouth began to quiver and the rest of them went very still and Emily leaned forward especially enrapt. “I am a sinful man who cannot help himself and who wonders sometimes why the Lord does these things to his children. The only answer that occurs to me is that we are in need of daily reminders, reminders of who we really are and of why we are here on this Earth and of how easy the Lord’s tests of our goodness and moral worthiness really are compared to the infinite dimensions of the afterlife.”

  Emily and Whitman correctly assumed he was repenting for what had happened earlier that day on the beach. Melville and the Frenchman, hungry and eager to get on with the meal, made no conjectures of any kind.